Bryan Miller

“Who else could you have been but exactly who you are? I said. Did you, in the womb, construct yourself? All your life you believed yourself to be making choices, but what looked like choices were so severely delimited in advance by the mind, body, and disposition thrust upon you that the whole game amounted to a sort of lavish jailing.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“That's what powerful men did. Stayed quiet. Held secrets. Ran things from inside a tight protective circle, making perilous decisions only they were savvy enough to make, leaving normal morality to the mere earthlings, who lived and ate and died dully down below, never knowing the extent to which they were being shielded by a beneficent distant pulling of strings.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Easy enough to regret a thing. Not good to get in the habit. When you regretted, folks pounced. You were weak with regret, they felt it, they pounced.

Then what? You had less power, could do less good.

So: no regrets.

Ever.”
― George Saunders, Vigil